White Lies
by valkyrie.fe
Summary: Some things are better off remembered. K/S.  "The Paradise Syndrome" 4/11 - Fixed the missing content. Oops.


This episode was actually one of my least favorites, so it's a little ironic to me that I'm writing a fanfic based off it. Racism and lolbaby aside, it irritated me to see Kirk so unconditionally reveling in a paradise when every single time a "paradise" or "utopia" appeared, he trashed it down in discontent. Of course this time, his memories were gone, but still. I just _had_ to make him a little less comfortable than he appeared to be. ;)

A detailed episode synopsis is here: http:/ memory-alpha. org/wiki/The_Paradise_Syndrome_(episode)

Otherwise, the most pertinent information is that Kirk is stranded on a planet for months, his memories erased, and that during those weeks Spock barely slept or did anything but attempt to decipher what happened to Kirk. c:

**April 11:** Fixed the fact that this chopped off the last four paragraphs or so of this story. Uh, thanks to everyone who liked it anyway, but here is the _proper_ final draft of this! xD

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><p><em>"No... there is no one else in my mind or in my heart."<em>

That was the first of them. Not a lie _really_ - even if something tugged at his heart, he had no idea what it was. His memories were gone, or at least indefinitely out of his reach. If a little shadow haunted his heart, then so what? All but the most vague details slipped through his fingers. So, how could he refuse Miramanee with that hopeful gleam in her eyes? Because of something he just couldn't grasp?

Why not have a life here? He was happy - he and Miramanee could be happy. She was beautiful, kind... he knew he could grow to love her fiercely.

He _craved_ this happiness. Tranquility. The word "paradise" floated through his skull, and he felt that it fit. But then why did that word also bring him discomfort?

Because-there was something he should be doing. He could not remember what, and frustrated, he relentlessly started project after project to help improve the village. He took pleasure in Miramanee's enthusiasm, buried himself in it-forced content and drowned out the unnamed part of his heart that cried out for something else. Something bigger, it longed for, something more. A place and people to which he belonged.

But he had that here! His wife. The village. He was forever frustrated with himself. If he'd had those things before, but couldn't remember them, why couldn't he be content now? He had a good life in the village. Could his memories really change things so drastically? If theycame back, then they did. Why worry over it? It was just a waste.

The word "illogical" slipped through his thoughts, too, and that made his heart yearn for reasons he couldn't fathom.

_"The dreams are gone."_

That one was more of a dodge. The dreams he told Miramanee had vanished were the ones in which he directed a vast... vessal? A boat for the stars, not water - 'the lodge which moves through the sky,' as Miramanee called it. After a while, he told her they stopped - and it was more or less true. He was no longer haunted nightly by dreams of _just_ that place (_home_, his mind echoed, and he squashed it down - home was with Miramanee.), but he was never without dreams of the people, strange but familiar faces that he was certain he should know.

But the dodgy half-truth he told assuaged his wife and that was what mattered. For some reason, the convoluted and yet straight-forward reasoning called up that familiar heartache. It was depressing and maddening. He was missing something - or someone - and he couldn't even _remember_.

The faces that haunted him... he longed for them. And he felt guilty for it - he wanted to give them up for Miramanee, blast it! But he couldn't, and he couldn't help longing to see them again, thinking and hoping - _maybe tonight. Maybe this time I'll remember._

He wished he _could_ remember, or forget completely, and be spared this infuriation. He wanted to know the meaning of the pair of piercing blue eyes and rough drawl of speech, or know nothing of them. He wanted to understand his preoccupation with the most alien visage of all - upswept eyebrows, pointed ears, an odd coloration of skin - or forget it all. Except he didn't quite _want_ to either. He could see _that _one the clearest in his mind, the body made of long and graceful lines, the demeanor that seemed cold and dispassionate, and his own unshakeable knowledge that this being was anything but uncaring.

He had no way of recalling that one's name - he couldn't even get his _own_ right. That didn't stop him trying; he always did, staring off into space with intent contemplation, remembering careful, purposeful movements and his mind screaming at the injustice of the name dancing just at its periphery.

And it didn't stop him nearly weeping in disappointment and frustration when he awoke and _knew_ he'd shouted the name from the depths of some dream - yet as he sat up and tried desperately to clutch the details _(that name!)_ it slipped cleanly out of his consciousness. Miramanee awoke at the shout and he assured her with the same soothing platitudes he always did.

For the millionth time, he touched her and thought her skin was too cool. The skin he expected to feel, the skin he _wanted_ to feel, burned much hotter beneath his fingers like a living furnace.

Shaking that away, he smiled at Miramanee and rolled back over to settle beneath the blanket again. The man, known to the village as the god Kirok, slept once more, unaware that countless thousands of miles beyond the sky his longing was reciprocated; that the mind behind the dark eyes which haunted him worked tirelessly on board that fantasy home in the sky, that those graceful, upslanted eyebrows were drawn together as that powerful Vulcan mind forwent sleep and sustenence in dedication to piecing together what had happened to his captain.


End file.
